Depression and anxiety are big issues for teenagers today. How might the skills and tools you describe in The Mastery Club help kids with these problems?
People become depressed when they are comparing their life to a ‘fantasy’, a dream of how it could or ‘should’ be. The Mastery Club is about creating the life of your dreams – in a realistic, practical way, through simple steps that are provided.
“Confidence follows as a result of taking realistic, grounded action on one’s important goals”
Anxiety occurs when we feel we are not coping or we are inadequate to the task at hand. The Mastery Club presents empowering and inspiring ideas in the form of simple practical strategies (goal-setting, visualisation, treasure-mapping) and six character lessons that communicate the importance of characteristics such as patience, persistence and resilience. This combination often moves the reader to apply the principles in their own life. In fact, one of my slogans is, ‘It’s not just a story’. Confidence follows as a result of taking realistic, grounded action on one’s important goals.
You’ve dedicated The Mastery Club to your mother. What kind of an influence was she on your philosophy and way of living today?
Author Liliane Grace was inspired by her mother’s books about creating our own reality
My mother was born in Poland in 1939, just three months before WWII broke out. Being Jewish, she and her mother were confined to the Warsaw Ghetto. (Her father had just left Poland to explore emigration options; when the war began, the borders were closed and he was unable to return to his family.)
When my grandmother heard rumours about the concentration camps and gas chambers, she obtained false papers, took my mother and escaped from the ghetto. They spent the rest of the war on the run, in hiding and in fear. At the end of the war they faced up to their losses – family members, friends, property. My grandfather had remarried in America, assuming them to have died in the camps. My grandmother and mother emigrated to Australia where they had to deal with a new language, culture and customs that were totally foreign to them.
As my mother grew up, she naturally had lots of questions about life, its purpose, why people do such things to each other, how to protect oneself… She began to read quite widely and her bookshelf included titles like The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, and Life & Teachings of the Masters of the Far East.
“When I watched my son playing ‘Harry Potter’, I thought, ‘What if kids knew they could do magic for real?’”
When I was a teenager, I began to read her books and I became hooked by the possibility that we can deliberately ‘create’ our reality. I had already been hooked by fiction-writing (where we create worlds for the purpose of entertainment) and was a mad story-writer; as I read this material I began to recognise the power of the word to influence our feelings and state of mind. The Mastery Club is an imaginary story about deliberately creating one’s reality (world).
Why did you want to write this book?
I was so inspired by the ideas I had read about in my mother’s library that I wanted to share them with my children and ultimately other young people around the world. When I watched my son and his friends playing ‘Harry Potter’ with cloaks and wands, I thought, “What if kids knew they could do magic for real?”
“Everyone has relationship issues, money issues, health issues… I wanted to bring some magic into everyday reality”
Youth literature is roughly divided into two categories: Fantasy fiction (magical objects, dragons, wizards, vampires) and Reality fiction (dealing with divorce, drugs, war, being a refugee, being Muslim in a western society), and while not many kids are going to stumble upon a dragon’s egg on their next stroll through the local park, everyone has relationship issues, money issues, health issues… I wanted to bring some magic into everyday reality.
The Hidden Order, the sequel to The Mastery Club, further explores the concept of the Law of Attraction. It is being launched in Melbourne on 15 July. If any readers of The Kids Are All Right wish to receive an invitation to the book launch, please contact Liliane via her website.
READER OFFER – FREE EBOOK
The Mastery Club is available to buy from www.themasteryclub.com.au/online-store.html for $24.95 for the paperback edition and $12.95 for the PDF eBook.
Readers of The Kids Are All Right can download the PDF version for FREE for the rest of June. Just enter the coupon code TKAAR at checkout.
RELATED: Lilian Grace wrote Guest post: Home schooling, from a mum who did
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Wow, amazing! I think we truly underestimate how important and influential reading can be for children (especially those with low self-esteem). They’re at an age where they’ll soak in everything and anything is possible. The Mastery Club sounds a truly unique story!
Grace recently posted..FYBF – How to par-taaay in your 40′s edition